Guiding the Dead of Icy Grotto

In the cold hush of the grotto where Albrecht once cast away his failed experiments like refuse, a dreadful silence clings to the wet stone. The stagnant air tastes of old blood and regret, a faint odor of decay mingling with the bitter chill. Through this gloom, HIM’s faint radiance feels fragile, wavering as it illuminates the figures that claw their way from the frigid water. They are pale silhouettes etched with dark veins of black sand, each shuddering with the memory of cruel torment. Their voices waver in hollow whispers—a painful, rattling chorus of anguish and desperate hope. The very walls seem to press in, heavy with centuries of unkindness, as these ruined souls gather in a mournful procession around HIM, awaiting release from a realm where horror still clings like a parasite.

HIM (softly): “Your suffering is at an end. I will guide you beyond this darkness. Speak if there is anything you wish known, so that your torment might serve to save others.”

Spirit (hoarse, fading voice): “We never knew what foul poison he pumped into our veins—this wretched black sand that gnawed at our minds, swallowed our hopes! He twisted us into horrors, then, once we were useless, he sent that spawn—from Dominion of the Black—to drag us here, tossed us away like rotting carrion! Damn him! Damn them both!

Another Spirit: Trembling, translucent fingers clinging to the edges of HIM’s light speaks, 
“Man, we never saw it coming—like, I swear I was seeing fractal patterns in the walls, and he… he kept talking about this thing—the Unseen Currents—like it was the key to everything. A book, an old, ancient book, said to open the path to the Endless Library. I tried—oh gods, I tried—to tell him it was bad news, but he was too far gone, raving about this… this Herald of Ossoyo, talking about bending time and space, unlocking the path of giants, opening that last gate of Slumber so he could get into Nod and that black lake. And the Yellow King too—like they both wanted it, promising him some… I don’t even know—cosmic power, maybe. But all I could see were these swirling, phosphorescent shapes in my head, and it all felt wrong, you know? So wrong. He really thought he could handle it, if he just found the many shaped key. I kept thinking, ‘No, man, that book wasn’t meant for us, for anyone.’ And now… now I can’t shake the feeling something’s still out there—lurking, waiting for its chance to burst out of that Library and swallow us all.

HIM (quiet urgency): “Did he learn how to find it? They book?”

Another Spirit: “He… he took me because I was a librarian, you see—I was supposed to know everything, right? All the secrets. I remember him babbling on and on about the Unseen Currents, like it was some gateway to that impossible place… that wretched, Endless Library. Gods, I’d read about it in half-rotted scrolls: a rumor, a legend! A cursed labyrinth where knowledge devours the unwary. I… I tried to argue, I did! I told him no scholar in their right mind believes in such a thing—that you won’t find it among the library’s stacks or dusty annexes, nor in any restricted collection. I laughed—ha!—I told him he might as well rummage through the unshelved returns lost in the book drop, that sad pile of abandoned volumes whispering to each other in the dark, for all the good it would do. But he wouldn’t listen. He just… he just kept ranting, as though the truth was right there in my head, and he’d tear it out if I wouldn’t give it willingly.”

HIM (quiet urgency): “Tell me about who he bargained with?

Another Spirit (eyes dimly glowing with the last echoes of black sand): “He struck a bargain with Xonthar, that one called the Herald of Ossoyo—the Whale that sleeps in cracks between worlds. They spoke in hushed riddles, trading secrets of black sand’s sway for an older debt. Albrecht vowed to procure some elusive tome, a thing the Whale craves as it stirs in dream-lost tides. Whispers say it would free the Whale to drift the Dreamlands unbound… or perhaps unravel them altogether”

Another Spirit (voice a broken whisper): “Albrecht whispered of dark rites and final lines—a foul incantation that only Xonthar, Herald of Ossoyo, could reveal. With that secret, he claimed in the Endless Library he’d could tear open the gateway anywhere, everywhere, to the beginning and the end. We listened to him rant in delirium: ‘One key with many forms to devour all knowledge… one gate to unbind all realms…’ He promised Xonthar he’d gift this power to the Whale, to feed its endless hunger for black sand, but the truth was far more twisted. He meant to hoard the rite himself, to hold it like a new Starstone and ascend beyond mortal chains. And all the while, he used us—our screams, our flesh—as wretched proof of concept, fueling his obscene ambition.”

HIM (gently extending a hand as spectral motes swirl around him): “His cruelty will not go unanswered. Your pain, your warnings, will guide those who stand against the Withering Man and his conspirators. Rest now, knowing you have done all you can.”

Spirits (a final lament): “P–please… you must… s–stop them… Endless Library—if they… if they breach it… oh gods, then Nod… Nod will be theirs. They’ll twist reality, shatter the Dreamlands like brittle glass… horrors… horrors crawling into every shadow—nothing left safe, nothing left whole…until the silent sea washes over all.”

HIM (bowing his head):
“By your courage, we shall strive to ensure it never comes to pass. Come, let the River of Souls grant you the peace you have been denied.”

As HIM’s soft illumination wraps around them, the spirits drift free from the black sand’s lingering corruption, and the fragments of their suffering dissolve into pale light. One by one, they vanish into the currents of the River of Souls, leaving behind their final warnings for those who yet walk the perilous path that Albrecht paved.